Snapdeal sees two more senior-level exits

Snapdeal’s head of corporate development Abhishek Kumar and senior vice president Sandeep Komaravelly have quit the home-grown e-commerce company, a financial daily reported on Tuesday.

Kumar, an alumnus of Indian School of Business, had joined Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd-owned Snapdeal in 2014 from Palaash Ventures, an early-stage, sector-agnostic investment firm. He oversaw Snapdeal’s $400-million acquisition of mobile wallet company FreeCharge in 2015, The Economic Times report said, citing a company spokeswoman. Kumar was responsible, along with founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, for raising funds for the company.

Former Housing CEO Jason Kothari, who joined Snapdeal as chief strategy and investment officer last month, will be taking over Kumar’s responsibilities, the report added.

Komaravelly has been with Snapdeal since 2010. In his last role, he headed Snapdeal’s zero-commission marketplace Shopo. According to his LinkedIn profile, Komaravelly has now joined Oben General Insurance Ltd. as chief marketing officer.

Queries sent to Snapdeal did not elicit a response at the time of writing this report.

Snapdeal recently underwent a restructuring, following which each category business unit now has four broad work streams—portfolio management, key accounts management, brand alliances management, and products life-cycle management.

Recent media reports suggest that the company is in talks with its investor Softbank Group Corp for raising fresh funds at a lower valuation, ranging between $3 billion and $4 billion. However, co-founder Kunal Bahl said in an interview on Monday that the e-commerce firm is looking to turn profitable in the next two years and it doesn’t need to raise funds unless it decides to make an acquisition.

Losses at Snapdeal, however, more than doubled to Rs 2,960 crore (around $436 million) for the financial year ended March 2016. The firm’s consolidated loss widened to Rs 3,315 crore from Rs 1,328 crore in 2014-15.

Snapdeal’s rival Flipkart has also seen senior-level exits recently at both the flagship marketplace as well as subsidiary online fashion retailer Myntra.

Just last week, Myntra’s supply chain head and senior vice president Rajul Jain, who was one of the cofounders of lifestyle e-tailer Yebhi.com, quit the firm.

Apart from CXO-level exits—Flipkart saw its chief product officer, chief financial officer, chief technology officer and chief business officer quit last year—the company has seen a strong churn in the second layer of leadership as well. There has also been a slew of exits at the senior vice president and vice president level.

Categories

KKR India CEO Sanjay Nayar says government reforms are all leading to a much higher degree of institutionalization in the Indian economy, which is beneficial for foreign investors looking to deploy long-term capital